Green Keepers

Family Works At Staying Environmentally Conscious

April 15, 1991|By BRUCE C. EBERT Staff Writer

NEWPORT NEWS — When Teri Hodson offers you a drink, you sip from a Mason jar - the same glassware that might have held beans or cornmeal a month ago. When you're finished and she's rinsed the jar, it's either left to air-dry or dried with a cloth towel.

"It's so easy to grab a paper towel," says Hodson, a 28-year-old wife and mother who considers herself sincerely trying to be environmentally aware in a world that still has a long way to go. "But if you use fewer paper towels, that's less paper and it means cutting fewer trees."

And by reusing the versatile Mason jars, the family saves money and does a part in the conservation of resources, she believes.

For many Americans, last year's Earth Day extravaganza provided the opportunity to take stock of how environmentally sensitive they have been. While surveys showed that people wanted to do right by the earth, sea and sky, the impracticality of some aspects of environmentalism sometimes have stood in the way. Hodson is one who has found obstacles in the way of doing more.

She tried using reusable cloth diapers on her 8-month-old son, Shane, but they irritated his skin. So, for now at least, he's wearing paper diapers - the kind that take up space in a landfill.

The family's garage is well-stocked with newspapers, plastics, aluminum cans and glass bottles waiting to be taken to recycling stations. The trouble is, Newport News has limited recycling apparatus - bins in five locations for the collection of some refuse, but not all. She can have her clear glass bottles and jars recycled, but not the dark glass beverage bottles, for example. And the Hodsons are a one-car family; her husband Bob drives from their Hilton home to Christopher Newport College, where he teaches computer science.

Recycling facilities for more waste are in Williamsburg, she notes, and occasionally she and a neighbor will go there to drop off her collections. "But going to Williamsburg doesn't make sense," she says. "They don't make it convenient here to recycle." Williamsburg also has curbside collection for recycling, which Newport News does not.

The family came to the Peninsula last summer from Tallahassee, Fla., which started a large-scale recycling program about January 1990, Hodson says.

"That's when I really got into it," she says. In Tallahassee, the Hodsons were house managers at a Ronald McDonald House, a short-term residence for families with children being treated at a local hospital. "I saw a lot of disposable materials. Yes, a lot of it was necessary because of the threat of germs, but it really made me think about how important it is to reuse."

Since then, the Hodsons have sought increasingly to use nontoxic fluids for cleaning. For cleaning their home's exterior prior to painting, they use a biodegradable trisodium phosphate substitute. For doing laundry, low-phosphate or phosphate-free detergent goes into the washing machine. And they plan to pick up reusable heavy nylon bags that they will be able to take to the supermarket, which will give them the opportunity to say "no, thank you, we've got our own," when the bagger asks, "Plastic or paper?" Meanwhile the Hodsons use those empty grocery sacks as garbage can liners.

"I wish I could be more selective about my products," says Hodson. "But, for example, to get more biodegradable products, you have to call a distributor or send for a catalog. It's not hard work, but there are steps involved, and I just haven't done it."

She says she will try again to put cloth diapers on Shane.

"I'd like to be a more environmentally conscious consumer," says Hodson. "I think I'm aware, but I've got a long way to go."

WAYS TO KEEP A LESS-TOXIC HOME

Shopping green means looking for nontoxic items that do the housework of chemicals and more durable items that don't require quick throwaway. Baking soda and white vinegar, says Johanna Hahn, a Virginia Cooperative Extension Service agent in Newport News, go a long way in the home when it comes to cleaning. Among the tips she suggests for a less-toxic home life are:

* A mixture of a quarter of a cup of white vinegar and a quart of warm water is an effective window-cleaner.

* A solution of a quarter-cup of baking soda and a half-cup of white vinegar will foam up in a stopped-up drain. Let it sit a while, then pour down boiling water and the drain should open.

* A container of baking soda left open in a room will eliminate odors. It will also absorb odors in refrigerators and in fireplaces where the scent of burned wood has remained. The same baking soda can be used for at least three months.

* To clean the over, warm the oven slightly, shut it off, then sprinkle water and baking soda on it. Rub it around with a fine steel wool, and then rinse well. The oven is clean.

* To clean linoleum, a mixture of white vinegar and two gallons of warm water should be as effective as product on the store shelf.